


Bird Boxed

by reylomami



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Bird Box Au, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Forced Cohabitation, Reylo - Freeform, Romantic support systems, TW at notes, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-28 00:07:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17172086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylomami/pseuds/reylomami
Summary: Two survivors find love in trying to stay alive by fighting off the demons of their past and grappling for the sight of their bleak post-apocalyptic futures.A Bird Box AU written in the spur of the moment. You know it had to be done.





	1. Weakness

**Author's Note:**

> TW: A brief mention echoing the film's premise of driving people into suicide. 
> 
> Terms adopted from Bird Box Wiki
> 
> Setting: Ben's house became a survivors' refuge by pure coincidence during the breakout much to his disapproval.

**_6 months after The Problem …_ **

 

_Yes, Rey, we’ve come to get you._

_You can look now._

“Mom?”

_It’s alright, sweetie. You can take a look._

“Rey, _don’t_!”

She feels large hands cover her own as soon as she touched her blindfold. “My parents – I hear them.”

_We’re going home now, Rey._

“It’s _not_ them, Rey,” he growls, desperation mixed with fear in his voice. “It’s _not real_ , do you hear me?”

_You’ve waited so long to see us. Let’s go now._

“W-wait,” Rey croaks after the distant familiar voices. “Don’t leave me.”

She ignores Ben’s fierce tone and manages to pull her blindfold down her face. But just as she opens her eyes, his large hands covers them tightly immediately after.

“What are you doing?”

“My parents!”

She hears them beckoning for her, taunting her to look before she misses them again. “Ben! Let go of me!”

“It’s _not_ real, Rey!”

He only tightens his hold over her eyes. “Stop it!” He demands when she starts to scratch his hands to get them off her eyes. She is desperate now to see the face of the parents she has long looked for.

The winds are bristling violently around them. She starts to lose the voices of the parents she never saw amidst the noisy whirring and Ben’s harsh voice.

“I’m going to lose them!”

“They’re not here for fuck’s sake! Rey!”

She claws at his hands and almost successfully wrenches them off her face just when the wind dies down. She pauses, listening for the familiar phantom voices. A hush quiet falls between them, the loaded silence broken by the crushing of dried leaves beneath their feet as Ben shuffles to put her blindfold back on.     

“You’re so stupid, Rey!”

Her mouth is dry, left hanging in the aftershock of how easily duped she was. Whatever creature was out there, she falls for its tricks and manipulations too easily. How easy was it for her to believe anything about her parents.

“We shouldn’t have taken you here.”

“ – I-I thought they were here.”

Ben does not answer when he lets go of her face. He leaves his hands on her arms to keep her still – and make sure that she doesn’t unblind herself again.

“We should go.”

“How are you not affected by this?”

She feels him hesitate, a hand leaving her arm to what she presumes to be him brushing his hair back.

“I’m too angry at the people that I’m supposed to long for.” He tells her. In the months that they have been confined in the house with the rest, he pieced a theory to rationalise the apparent lack of effect of The Problem on him. They’ve seen and heard enough to know that the Creature out there was 'infecting' people to kill themselves - everyone but him. 

His candor evidently stills her. He never gives up any crucial information about himself to the other survivors. He had been the wariest and the most closed off among everyone. It miffed the others, but he couldn’t be bothered. They were intruders of his house-turned-refuge, anyway.

Somehow now, he knew he had to placate the strong-willed Rey by speaking up before she loses her sense of reality.

“I’m sorry about … that was so stupid of me,” she whispers, shaking her head as realisation of what just happened dawns upon her. She feels a little cold at admitting her weakness in front of him instead of starting a row like their competitive streak would normally do.

He notes the change.

“Let’s just go.”

 

 

They manage to bring supplies back to the house where the other survivors were waiting for them. Finn is the most relieved to see Rey alive and well. He notably masks his gratefulness in Ben’s direction by nodding stiffly once in acknowledgement at the tall, brooding guy. It was hard to remain hateful to the survivor who initially refused them refuge.

There was an air of celebration at the arrival of food rations and other treats brought in by Rey and Ben’s courageous scavenge. The medicine they got came just in time to help the deathly sick Poe. In a matter of days, he recovered quickly much to everyone’s relief and they were all back to their survival routine: Finn and Rose fulfilling homemaking duties, Poe, Maz and Ben keeping watch of the perimeters of the house.

As they rotate duties every other day, Rey remained at the workbench at the basement (her assigned room), tinkering with radio devices and signals in the hopes of reaching other survivors. To this day, little success have been found.

She was on the brink of throwing one of the devices against the wall when she hears the sound of footsteps climbing down the basement staircase.

They were heavy and she knew it was Ben without having to look.

“Ever heard of knocking?”

They haven’t acknowledged each other since the scavenge. And it has admittedly been strange not rising to the baits provoked by each other as they would before.

“Funny how the tables have turned,” he mutters as he walks up to her workbench to take a look. “There’s no such thing as privacy when it’s the end of the world – was that not what you said?”

Rey shakes her head at the reminder of their first proper conversation together. She had only been trying to be nice back when they were all trying to settle and find their roles in the house. When she thought she could contribute with the chores, she had picked up his laundry in his room, as she has with the other’s, to wash them (a luxury, she soon realized they could not always afford).

Unfortunately for both him and her, the shirt she picked up had been mixed with his missing fiancée’s. And it wasn’t his as they both came to realise.

Rey shakes her head at the memory. At least their soured acquaintance has improved since.

“Dinner’s ready for you.” Meal times were on a shift-basis too. “You’re on dishwashing duty today too.”

Rey nods without a witty remark and makes to clear her workbench.

Ben doesn't leave just yet. She feels him watching her back, wary for her now instead of himself.

“Keep this up and I might hear your thoughts,” she finally says to break the anticipatory silence.

She hears him sigh, red-handed, and spares him by finally turning around and meeting his gaze.

“I don’t resent you for almost killing yourself back at the mart.”

“No, you just think I was stupid.”

Ben doesn’t deny the truth she speaks. It’s all revealed in the way his face flinches at her words.

Shaking his head, he affords a step towards her in caution. “I don’t want to play this competition, Rey. I’m not trying to one-up you or show you that I’m fitter than you in this game of survival. What happened there – “

Rey rubs her face. “Listen, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here but I’d really not talk about that.”

Ben shakes his head. “Forgive me but I think you have to.”

She snaps her eyes angrily at him. “Because I need to resolve _this weakness_ , is that it?” He thinks _she_ will get them killed if they ever go out and make themselves vulnerable again.

“For one, _yes_.” His tone almost rises to the bait thrown by her her tone. How easily their patience is tested by the other.

“Goddamnit, I’m not the only fucking liability in here – “

“I’m not saying that – “

“Just because I was a fucking orphan desperate to find crumbs of my fucking parents doesn’t make me the greatest liability here  – we all have our weak points, asshole.”

“Will you just shut the fuck up and hear what I’m trying to say?”

She’s seething at him now. To anyone, they might look like two people with a lot of pent-up history. But she knew this was merely their competitive streak tempting to take the worst out of them.

“All I wanted to say,” Ben starts, careful to speak efficiently before she cuts him off unnecessarily again, “is that you can talk to somebody about it. I’ve thought about it, and maybe bottling ourselves up from one another might just kill ourselves sooner. We need to hold ourselves accountable to each other if we want to survive.”

Rey scrutinizes him. For sure, he must be joking.

“Are you kidding me right now? This isn’t funny, Ben.”

“I’m not – I’ve seen how Poe, Finn and Rose open up to each other so easily and handle exposure much better than the other survivors have. Maz is always yappin' away and Jess - " He hesitates at the traumatising memory of losing one of their own. "Well, had we known that Jess was recently mourning her dead brother we wouldn’t have sent her out with Poe with the rest that one time. Bottling ourselves up makes us a lot more anxious and more gullible to whatever fucked-up creature is out there manipulating its preys' deepest fears and longings.”

Ben is beyond serious with his proposition. Rey is almost at a loss for words.

“A-are you offering …” Her mouth is too dry from her surprise at _this_ Ben. So much for being the recluse among all of them.

“Yes,” he says clearly. “For selfish reasons, of course. If you need someone to talk to – I think ... Well, I might be able to be that kind of support. For practical reasons.”

Rey frowns at his excess of clarification. She nods anyway.

“It’ll take awhile,” he continues warily in her silence. “I’m not the easiest person to be comfortable with – but I think it’ll work.”

“Is this a one-way thing?” she asks, practical and efficient in knowing the details of his proposition. “Me trusting you and you just taking it in without trusting me with yours in turn? Is that all?”

Ben studies her. She sees him purse his pouty lips in deep thought. The lips she had naively thought weren't so capable of cutting remarks and controversy at the beginning. 

 _S_ _o he hasn’t thought about his part yet_ , she thinks as she waits for him. He speaks up eventually, cutting the tension loose in the air.

“I’d like to trust you too, Rey.”

She breathes, almost relieved to hear him say that.

“Good.”

“Yes, good.”

“Tonight then.” She bravely proposes.

“Whatever you like.”

“I don’t want Poe to find the beer I hid for crucial situations.”

“Good.”


	2. Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, "The Problem" refers to the breakout as depicted in the film. According to wiki, it's the term used in the novel too. Cheesy but it's easier for me to use too hehe HOPE you guys like this one.

**_8 days after The Problem …_ **

Rey angrily picks up the old laundry she finds and throws them in the basket she found in the basement. _You don’t get to do the man’s job here_ , they said. _Leave the dirty work to the guys_ , Poe said.

The thinly disguised misogyny boiled the blood in her veins. All she had done was pick up Poe’s gun and aim it at the door as a precaution. They couldn’t trust every refugee out there – just as Ben didn’t trust any of them at all when they all burst into his home uninvited during the outbreak.

It’s been four days since she flipped Poe off at his words. Even making a point to disarm the gun in front of everyone to show just who he thought he was talking to. From then on, they included the women in their watch guard rotations.

Unfortunately, in one of the days where she was merely assigned the dishwashing and homemaking duties, Rose and Finn had unintentionally regarded her work with a look of distaste. The dishes weren’t pristine clean – was that a smudge they are seeing? Rey didn’t like the idea of being thought of as incompetent in any of her contributions to the Refuge.

And hence why she finds herself taking the initiative to do something out of the ordinary that day for her homemaking rotation.

She has gathered dirty piles of clothes from the other campers (a term they have decided to use over ‘survivor’ or ‘refugee’) who had directed her on where to find them when she had asked. It was warming to know that they didn’t find the idea of doing laundry during the apocalypse repulsive.

The only person Rey wasn’t able to ask his laundry for was none other than the host himself, Ben. After having done everyone else’s laundry, he was still nowhere to be found. So she finds herself taking another initiative by stepping inside his room – the master bedroom, naturally – to dig out his laundry.

The door had been slightly ajar and she gathered that he was busy with watchguard duties. Rey is quick to pick up any clothes she finds that needed washing – even the ones he had hung up to reuse.

When she looks under the bed, she finds a couple more clothes – _how mature_ – and pulls them out to examine their state. It was an expensive pale blue dress shirt and an ivory silk dress which she quickly attributes to Ben’s fiancée (the sharp-looking woman she sees in the few pictures around his room).

Upon further inspection, she sees an actual lipstick mark on the collar of the shirt. Rey’s brows rise. It was hard to picture Ben in his aloof and cold nature being capable of romantic endeavors. She starts to wonder what his fiancée saw in him when –

“What. Are. _You_. Doing?”

Ben stands at the door, his cold hard gaze on her. At least he’s giving her his fullest attention for once.

“Getting everyone’s laundry,” Rey answers, unfazed as she gets up from the floor and surrenders the two items she had just picked out from under his bed.

“Have you heard anything about her yet?”

Ben scrutinizes her. What guts she has to ask personal questions. “I’ve stopped looking for her. I think she’s dead.”

His clenched ease in saying those words makes her jaw drop. Now she really wonders what his fiancée saw in him. “You’re hopeless.”

“And clearly, you have no sense of boundaries.”

“Well, privacy isn’t a luxury we can afford at the end of the world.”

Rey makes to take the other shirt that was not his fiancee’s lingerie dress. Ben however keeps his hold onto it.

“Do you want me to wash this for you or not?”

His scrutinizing eyes are now fixed on the pale blue dress shirt. His sudden silence catches her attention. Finally looking over at him, she follows his gaze to the collar where the smudge of pink lipstick is evident.

Her eyes are quick to then notice the veins that are starting to pop on the hand that is grasping the shirt.

“Ben?”

“This isn’t mine.”

Rey looks at his face now. Concern taking over snark. His face is very still and his gaze harder than she had ever seen before.

Realisation dawns unto her about the meaning of this shirt.

“I’m so – “

“ _Don’t_.”

Without sparing a glance at her, he determinedly lets go of the shirt like it burned him and turns to leave.

She finds herself alone in the master bedroom then. The pictures of the smiling couple that owned this home suddenly looking very eerie and inauspicious to her.

 

 

**_Present day (6 Months after The Problem)_ **

 

Rey looks for Ben after she finishes cleaning up after dinner. She has the beer she had kept hidden in the refrigerator in her hands. When she reaches his bedroom door, she raps her knuckles lightly on it.

Ben opens the door in a matter of seconds. He’s changed into a white shirt and a pair of dark sweats. He wordlessly opens the door wider for her to enter.

Their strange, amicable silence feels foreign and unsettling if prolonged, so Rey extends one of the two bottles of beer to him. “Here. As promised.”

He eyes the bottle before taking it from her gratefully. Rey watches him move over to where she assumes he had been settled on the floor next to the bed before her arrival. She nimbly follows after and sits at a polite distance next to him, sighing loudly as she leans her heavy back against the side of the bed. Bending at the sink to do the dishes took a toll on her back. She wonders how Ben’s height could endure the low sink.

Ben is apparently equipped to uncap their bottles already. The popping sound of uncapping each bottle feels like a beckon for celebration. “To living,” he toasts, extending the neck of his bottle to her.

“To living,” she echoes, touching her bottle to his before tipping it up over her lips.

“It’s been awhile since I nursed one of these,” he reflects quietly after taking a sip. Rey watches him study the bottle. His large fingers moving to rotate the bottle under his studious gaze.

She wants to ask the follow-up question, “Why?” But decides against it when she remembers that he had offered to be a listening ear _for her_. She had to open up first.

“My grandfather warned me about these,” she says, almost amused at a dark memory that starts to seep into her head. She feels Ben’s watchful eyes shift over to her.

She doesn’t wait for him to make the awkward move of asking why. Personal boundaries are still ambiguous for them to navigate.

“I think he was hinting at the idea that my parents – one of them or both, I don’t know – had a drinking problem.”

She sets the bottle down and twirls it lightly on the floor. “I never saw cocktails when I lived with him. Not even at his funeral as he had long requested.”

“Do you think you’re doing a disservice to him right now?” Ben lightly asks. The tip of his lips quirks up by a fraction.

Rey shrugs. “Maybe – but it makes me taste a bit of what it might have been like to be my parents.” She picks up the bottle again and takes a drink. Her face grimaces at its taste after. “I never understood what they liked about drinks – it’s not as tasty as lemonade or – “

“Are you seriously comparing – “

“I just don’t see its appeal, that’s all.” She takes another sip anyway. relishing in the bitterness of the beer. Without thinking much into it, she also says, “I don’t see what value they saw in this over me.”

Ben is quiet. And she doesn’t like the unsettling silence that expands between them.

“And yet I still yearn for them, wanting to see what they saw and maybe understand them, not like the way my grandfather did. He was always condescending of my parents and I never fully knew why. It’s hard to compete with him on who has the most hatred harbored for my parents.”

“You mean you don’t hate them?”

Rey thinks for a moment. “How can I when I never knew them? It feels only unfair if I extend that anger my grandfather had on them without my own understanding.”

Ben nods, now understanding why she sought out her parents so earnestly in spite of the time that has long passed since she last saw them.

“You’re a good person, Rey.”

“Now you’re just joking.”

He almost laughs at her refusal to accept his compliment. “Why would I? You wouldn’t have refused entry to this house like I did.”

“Maybe, yeah.” Rey shakes her head. “But then I would start to think far ahead like you did and I’d still hold up a gun at the door for any other new intakes after a few days.”

Ben lets himself laugh in spite of the macabre nature that their conversation is starting to take a turn. “You had us all surprised that day. You and your little frame and that giant gun. What a view.”

She knocks her bottle on his shoulder. “Watch it. We’re not close enough for that kind of banter just yet.”

He eyes her from the side and she sees his dimple deepen from his amusement. She never thought she’d find it very endearing.

 

The nights they spend together when neither of them are bound for duty are soon dubbed Meditation. The term stuck after one of the nights when Ben recounts an eccentric uncle he has whom his mom had employed to help manage her eight-year-old son’s emotions. The supposed solution was a zen style of meditation.

Spoiler alert: it did not work.

“ _Eight_? Isn’t that age normal for kids to be having wild tantrums and anger issues?”

“My mom’s not the most attuned mother out there,” he gamely says in good spirits.

They leave that conversation as it is, not wanting to probe further and risk overstepping the other’s threshold for sharing.

 

On one of the later nights, Rey feels confident enough to venture into more intimate topics of conversation. They’ve covered and touched topics at its surface level before already. And those were done without the aid of any beer (they ran out by their third night).

“Tell me about her,” she says on one of those nights.

The tranquil quiet that he had been enjoying is immediately snatched away. Ben visibly stiffens and Rey has the grace not to look at him just yet so as to help him compose himself.

To her relief, he clears his throat. “What about her?”

“What did she see in you?”

Ben thinks for awhile. “Stability.”

“And what did you see in her?”

His silence is longer for this question. She patiently waits, putting up the pretense of being engrossed in her chipped nails instead of his answer.

“I thought I saw a companion.”

This piques her attention and Rey finds the need to look at him with her quizzical brows unabashedly raised. “A _companion_?”

Her surprised bristles him a little. “What?”

“Nobody calls their significant other a ‘companion’,” she explains. “What about her as a companion that you saw?”

Ben visibly frowns at her. “Look, it wasn’t easy for me to keep friends, let alone have anyone interested in having a committed relationship with me. When Baz came, we offered each other what we each looked for.”

“And she saw stability in you?”

“Yes. She came from a very dysfunctional family, if you must know.”

“And what made her a good companion for you?”

Ben raises a brow at her now. “You’re really not pulling back on those questions, are you?”

Rey simply shrugs at him, waiting for an answer.

“I didn’t say she was a good companion,” he slowly clarifies. “She was the only one who seemed to tolerate being with me.”

Rey frowns at his choice of words.

“She flirted with me, and entertained me – and when I asked her about being serious, she agreed. She said she never thought she’d be one to settle.” Ben hesitates. Rey watches him raise his arm to weave his hand through his fallen locks. “Clearly, she hadn’t thought wrong.”

Rey allows for the silence to fall between them. He needs the time to recompose his emotions, which she suspects were at the verge of tipping over.

“That shirt you found,” he speaks again after some time passes, “It wasn’t the first time.”

Ben avoids her surprised look.

“I confronted her once about it, and I guess the fear of losing her to someone else pushed me to propose to her. In the vain hope of keeping her forever.”

Rey does not dare to ask another question. Instead, she settles her hand carefully on his forearm and brushes her thumb lightly on his skin as if to calm his raging thoughts which he surprisingly covers well behind his stoic face.

When some time passes, she takes her hand back from where it was settled on him.

“Ben, you should know that you have many companions with you today.”

“Not the most ideal context, but sure.” They both smile at each other and she likes the sight of dimples.

She makes a point to see it deepen at her doing.

“For what it’s worth – I don’t tolerate being in your presence, Ben. I really enjoy my time with you.”

She succeeds. His dimples do deepen and she catches the sight of it before he turns his face away for a moment.

“Well, you’d be the first then. Thank you.”

She grins. “Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn to what?”

“To say that you don’t tolerate my presence too,” she cheekily says. She’s joking just to ease any awkward that might come between them. But he surprises her when he seriously says it anyway.

She never thought it would be during the apocalypse when she sees the most beautiful, genuine eyes she’s ever seen.

It’s a shame they have to blindfold themselves when they are made to go out to scavenge for rations.

 

 

 


End file.
